


Quo Vadimus

by lizznotliz



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 15:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21199736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizznotliz/pseuds/lizznotliz
Summary: When Billy gives them the choice, it's not even really a decision for Duck. He'll go back to Earth and, if Minerva wants to come along, he'll help her get settled.(set mid-/post-finale, can be read as platonic BFFs or pre-relationship, not explicitly shippy)





	Quo Vadimus

It's not really a decision for Duck.

Sylvain holds no sway over him, not when his apartment and his cat and his job are all back on Earth. He doesn't have an insatiable curiosity like Thacker, or a girlfriend and an inner goddess to consider like Aubrey.

Duck's work is done and he'd really like to just go home.

But before he does, he pulls Billy aside and tries to impart whatever wisdom he can, reminding him to act with kindness and empathy and any tips he can remember on how to beat Final Fantasy VII. He gives Thacker a firm handshake and shares a complicated half-hug with Vincent before they step through the gate. Aubrey, he saves for last, knowing that she's staying as soon as her eyes stop glowing and she looks at him with a strange sort of sad excitement. He fishes an old business card out of his wallet - gamely enduring Aubrey's teasing that he _brought his wallet_ on an _end-of-the-world mission_ “like an old man” - and has Aubrey write down her dad's email address; Duck promises to send him an email that explains why Aubrey doesn't answer her phone anymore. He's not quite sure what he'll come up with, given how much trouble he has with lying, but maybe Mama - already back through Earth’s gate to check on Barclay and the rest of the Lodge - can help him out. Aubrey hugs him tight, burying her face in his chest for a hot minute, before she squeezes one last time, calls out "catch you on the flipside!" and gives him a flame-tipped thumbs up as she bolts through Sylvain's gate.

And then there's just Minerva, standing in the middle of the room next to Billy. She's looking up at the other gates, the other paired planets that endured the same fate as Earth and Sylvain, and her own home planet. There are dozens upon dozens, stretching up far enough that Duck doesn't even bother trying to count them all, but he knows what she's thinking: all that fighting, all that dying, all the aggression and confusion and suffering that Reconciliation brought these worlds, and they'll never know if any of them manage to recover.

Miralaviniax Orbital Body Five certainly won't.

"Where are you gonna go?" Duck asks. He sticks his fingers in his empty belt loops, still trying to comprehend that Beacon is gone. Minerva blinks, then looks down from the gates and at Duck. Her gaze is solemn and steadfast and he hears _I cannot go home, Wayne Newton_, even though she doesn't say it. He's sure Sylvain would welcome her with open arms, if she decided to go; she would definitely stick out less there. Aubrey would make sure Minerva had a place to go and something to do. Duck would miss her, he knows that for a fact, but she's earned whatever peace she can find now.

"I thought, perhaps, I might return with you to Earth, Wayne Newton.” She frowns, looking through the gate to Earth, staring at the dusty attic of the Cryptonomica like Duck’s already gone through and left her behind. “I found it quite fascinating and would like to explore it more. Would that be all right?”

It’s an earnest question; he can tell that she would turn on her heel and go to Sylvain if he didn’t want her around. But he’s gotten used to having her, and Leo and Sarah would miss her, too. More than anything, though, he wants Minerva to feel like she belongs somewhere, like the sins she committed at Reconciliation’s bidding don’t have to weigh so heavy on her shoulders anymore.

“C’mon,” Duck says, nudging her elbow and nodding a solemn goodbye to Billy. “I got waffles in the freezer.”

Duck goes to work. He buys groceries. He checks on Kirby, and the Hornets, and he and Minerva get dinner on Sunday evenings with Mama and Barclay and the rest of the Lodge crew. Things don’t exactly go back to normal, considering he never really interacted with any of those folks before he joined the Pine Guard and he misses Aubrey something fierce, but it gets a lot more peaceful. He has time to watch TV in the evenings again. He calls Jane every Thursday night. He can sleep in on Saturday mornings with his cat.

Minerva stays in the guest room, the one that was really more of an office when he lived alone. It's where she slept right after she arrived, when Duck's apartment was a lot more full. She wants to explore - that’s why she came back to Earth with him - but she needs a place to stay for now and Duck finds that he got used to living with other people again. She's too tall to fit on his couch, so she bunks on the floor, stretched out with every blanket Duck owns. He apologizes, more than once, but she always waves it away with, "Your Earth furniture is no match for my stature, Wayne Newton!" Duck wonders what kind of furniture they had on her planet; she doesn’t seem to find the floor uncomfortable and he thinks maybe she’s always slept on one.

Minerva tries to keep herself busy while Duck is at work. She spends her mornings taking runs through town to expend some of her energy; Zeke calls him down at the ranger station one day to let him know they've stopped investigating when folks call 911 about the large woman sprinting down Main Street. Sometimes she goes down to the Hornets Nest and helps them clear away debris; once, he dropped her off at the Cryptonomica because Kirby asked her to help him move some things around the museum. Every Tuesday, Duck gives her his public library card and she goes to the children's section and checks out picture books about different countries. He'll come home in the evening to find her looking at photos of Egypt and Sweden and Chile and the Philippines, a different batch of countries every week, glossy technicolor pages that show Minerva the unique wonders of Earth.

She’s asked him before, how the people of Earth travel and how she might visit these places; Mama’s promised to see about getting her identification of some sort and, if they can sort out that tricky problem, Duck would happily buy her a plane ticket to see anything she wants. Maybe he’ll get one of the Hornets to show her how Instagram works before she leaves.

"Where are you gonna go?" Duck asks, every Tuesday night, while he cooks dinner. Minerva will pick a book from her stack and read him fun facts from her favorite of this week’s countries.

"This wall, Wayne Newton, it is a truly great wall. You can see it from space!"

Duck likes watching Kepler put itself back together. Every day it feels a little bit easier to breathe here, like his spirit was as bruised and battered as the town. People are kinder, and more willing to lend a hand; Amnesty Lodge is back open; Kirby's reopening the Cyrptonomica in a few weeks. Everything's coming together.

But he feels like he's standing still.

There are no monsters to fight, no destiny to fill, and as grateful as he is about that, it feels like everything in his life has just stopped. He has his job and his cat and his apartment - and, yes, an alien living in his spare room - but for the first time in his life that doesn't feel like enough. He thought it would be, he _really_ did. He wanted this, didn’t he? He wanted a normal life; he spent two decades clinging to it.

But it’s not enough. Now that he knows what he’s capable of, he’s not sure he can just _stay_. He doesn’t want to fight anymore, but he needs to find something in the middle, something between violence and complacency.

"Where are you going to go, Wayne Newton?" Minerva asks, far more gently than he’s ever heard from her before. He’s standing in the kitchen with his fists clenched at his side, grinding his teeth as he stares at the half-empty fridge. He doesn’t ask how she knows that he wants to get away; it’s not really a surprise anymore than she can read him as well as she does.

“What? I’m-- nowhere, Minerva.” It’s not a lie. He’s _not_ going anywhere. He _wants_ to but… he’s not sure how to leave: leave Kepler, leave his job, leave her.

She watches him for a minute, eyes the way he splays out his fingers and rubs the bridge of his nose, considers the red tips of his ears; he’s embarrassed at how upset he got about this. He didn’t think it was bothering him this much, to be honest. For some reason, the idea of going to the grocery store _again_, picking up the same things _again_, checking in on everybody _again_, it just got to him.

He’s not _enough_ anymore. But he’s fine.

“You are not fine, Duck Newton,” she says, and it’s the first time she’s called him _Duck_ since they came back from Reconciliation. “Where are you going to go?”

“Nowhere.”

“Where do you want to go?”

And a dam breaks, the words spilling out before he even has a chance to really think them through: “Somewhere I can help. Somewhere I can just do somethin’ real, y’know? I was thinkin' about Brazil.” And he wasn’t, really, not until this exact moment but maybe it’s been percolating in the back of his head since yesterday afternoon when Juno told him about that program she applied to while they ate lunch together. “Y'know, the Amazon? We read about it in one of your books, but a bunch of it got burnt up. I bet, uh, I bet they could use an extra pair of hands. Right? That's a forest I could help."

Jane, halfway around the world on her own adventure, thinks it’s a great idea. _Never thought I’d see you out of Kepler, though_, she says, and he bites his tongue against telling her all that he’s seen in the last year. Mama smiles and wishes him well, promises to keep sending Aubrey’s dad emails; their system is complicated - Aubrey writes a letter and delivers it to Thacker, who reads it to Mama when they have their psychic conversations, who transcribes it and hands it over to Duck, who types it all up one more time for Mr. Little - but it’s kept everyone happy, and Duck’s grateful that that’s one less thing for him to worry about. Juno is delighted to have him coming along, and delighted even more still when they get their assignments and she finds out she’s his boss. Leo and Sarah promise to keep an eye on Minerva and his apartment until he gets back.

Minerva insists that she is going to travel as well. Mama finally came through on a passport, and Duck thinks maybe Agent Stern had a hand in it, too. Duck’s knee-deep in paperwork for his new job, and a visa, and everything else, but he sets aside a little time every night after dinner to sit down with Minerva and help her figure out where she wants to go. Duck believes her when she says she wants to travel, but she can’t seem to narrow her list down, or even pick a place to start. He quietly adds her name to his apartment lease, just in case she hasn’t made up her mind by the time he leaves for Brazil; it’ll be easier for her to stay, then, and he won’t have to worry about her so much.

“Where are you gonna go?” He asks, just as he does every night as he starts washing dishes. Minerva sits at the kitchen table, brow furrowed, as she looks at the piece of notebook paper where she’s written down her favorite places from those Countries Of The World picture books. She takes a deep breath, and he shuts off the water so he won’t have any trouble hearing what she’s going to say, but she doesn’t say anything at all. “Minerva? You okay?”

“I have added another location to my list, Wayne Newton,” she informs him, and he smiles a little and shakes his head. He’s never seen Minerva so indecisive before and it’s kinda funny. He said as much to Juno yesterday, when they got together to sign the last of the paperwork for their temporary reassignments; she was stern with him, told him not to make fun of Minerva and reminded him she’s new to the planet. Duck _knows_. Hell, Duck knows that better than anyone. He’d never make fun of Minerva. He’s pretty sure some of his is his fault, honestly; he’s the one leaving, after all.

“Okay, Minerva, tell me about this new place.”

She pauses again, and he notices how stiffly she’s sitting at the table, chair pulled back so her knees don’t hit the underside. It’s the first time he’s ever thought she looked uncomfortable in his home. “I have added the Amazon Rainforest to my list,” she says, then looks over at him standing at the sink, hopeful and almost defiant. “I have been listening to you and Ranger Juno Divine speak about the work you plan to do there, and how you wish to ‘give something back’” and she makes exaggerated finger quotes with her hands, something she’s been prone to lately since Jake taught her how at dinner a few Sundays ago, “and make the planet a better place. I believe your work would support what Billy entreated us to do, Wayne Newton.”

“Prove ‘em wrong,” Duck says.

“Exactly, Wayne Newton. I would like to prove them wrong as well.”

There’s a knot in Duck’s gut that loosens all of a sudden, and he feels so damn _relieved_ that he has to lean against the kitchen counter so his knees don’t give way. He feels just like he did standing on the dish of the satellite at Green Bank, when she stepped out of the black hole right in front of him and he realized she wasn’t lost anymore. It makes perfect sense, Minerva going with him. He won’t worry about her screwing up some local custom in God-knows-where, having folks who don’t know what she’s been through and how she saved the world get angry at her or make fun of her. He won’t sit in the middle of the Amazon, thinking about all the people who’ve left him, trying to convince himself that having lunch with Juno every afternoon means he shouldn’t feel lonely.

For most of his adult life, Duck has been at his best when Minerva was at his side. If she wants to stay there a little longer, he’s not going to object.

The amount of forged paperwork involved with getting Minerva to Brazil - from her passport to her work visa - is staggering, and their only saving grace is that everyone from the forestry service to airport customs agents are too busy looking at Minerva herself to give her paperwork much more than a glance. Duck spends a little extra money to get them both first class seats so Minerva has almost enough leg room for the stupidly long flights they have to take. Juno - brilliant, wonderful Juno - pulls some strings to make sure Duck and Minerva are working the same shifts so Duck can show her how everything works, and so no one else will notice they’ve brought a complete novice along.

It does seem a shame, Duck thinks as they head out that first day, that the first thing Minerva sees outside of Kepler isn’t the best that Earth has to offer. It hurts Duck’s heart to see a forest, any forest, in this state; sure, there’s science behind natural wildfires and the regrowth that happens there, a normal and necessary cycle that occurs periodically. Duck’s seen forests like that before, but the Amazon is something different. This was malice and greed and he can still smell the smoke when they start hauling their saplings to their flagged section for replanting.

Maybe this is the kind of thing that Billy was talking about when he said Reconciliation had decided that Earth’s bad outweighed its good. Ash and smoke and a world gone gray.

“Where are we going, Wayne Newton?” Minerva stands beside him, staring at what’s left of their little part of the Amazon. She’s carrying twice as many saplings as he is with half as much effort, and the sun - no longer blocked by the canopies of grown, thriving trees - shines on her bald head. She looks down at him, questioning but not prodding.

“Right. So. Replanting. Huh.” Duck kneels in the dirt and shows her how to test the soil, how deep to dig the little hole, how much water to pour on top, how much space they should leave between each sapling. There are dozens and dozens of other rangers and volunteers out here replanting, but Duck and Minerva are the only two in their little section this morning so Duck can pretend it’s just the two of them. He coaches Minerva on how to oh-so-gently pat the dirt around the base of a sapling, and he’s never seen her concentrate on anything so hard before. When they finish with the supplies that they have, Duck insists they can take just a minute to sit and relax before they head back for the next load.

Minerva sits cross-legged beside him on the ashy dirt, back ramrod straight, and stares unblinking at the rows of tiny trees they’ve just planted. Duck’s row is neat and orderly and evenly spaced; Minerva’s is a little crooked, but not too bad for a newly hired forest ranger. While Minerva watches the saplings, Duck turns toward the edge of the damage, where he can see the still-thriving section of the Amazon towering in the distance.

“We can fix this, right, Minerva? I mean, not all of it, obviously, but… we can do something about it?”

Minerva smiles and gestures towards one of the saplings she planted, growing tilted out of the ground. “We already are, Wayne Newton.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay. Good.” Duck crawls to his feet, dusts some dirt from the seat of his pants, and then holds out a hand for Minerva. “C’mon, we should be able to get another two or three loads planted before lunch.”


End file.
